


The Man Stuck Home

by MacaroniSwirls



Category: BBC Sherlock, Homestuck, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, The worst crossover
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-09
Updated: 2012-01-17
Packaged: 2017-10-29 06:28:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/316748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MacaroniSwirls/pseuds/MacaroniSwirls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes puzzles are found in humans, and when Sherlock finds one such puzzle in John Egbert, he sets out to solve it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My friends challenged me to write a Homestuck/BBC Sherlock crossover. I ended up putting in much more effort than is logical.

There is this child he sees, and the boy makes no sense - Sherlock looks and looks, but nothing makes sense: Despite his normally calm exterior, he reacts too intensely to certain stimuli - a black dog, flaming oil, spirographs - a sure sign of intense trauma; he intensely enjoys the wind, lifting his hands and laughing; he hates the death of spiders - you killed one in front of him, and he just stared and stared and stared.

And sometimes, when he’s alone in a corner, you see him crying, and you use his flurry of body motion and the way that he clutches himself to deduct that he has lost sometime important, so very important, and this is what causes you to talk to him.

“So, Mr. Egbert, what went missing?” And this is the moment John looks at you, and you decide that this kid is an enigma, and that he will be solved.

It had taken a hardly a modicum of time to figure out his profession – a businessman. It was obvious from the way his hair was cut – a short cut often required by leading enterprises. His fingers were well worn, the type of worn that one gets when one does nothing but type, and sign papers, and type some more. His skin is pale, but slightly worn in the way that occurs when one does nothing but get exposed to fluorescent ultraviolet lights in cubicles.

The last clue is that he fidgets, and looks around, the way that someone does when they’re trapped in a life they don’t want. The thing that makes you curious is that he isn’t looking in general – no, he’s looking for a specific someone. His eyes flicker and pause over certain key things – a pair of black shades, particularly round glasses, a short blond bobcut, and one time he stopped and looked particularly long at a ventriloquist performing with a poorly crafted puppet.

It’s so pathetically easy to get him to start talking.

“Someone went missing,” you say. “Short blonde hair, a particular affinity for sewing, occasionally dabbled in Lovecraftian theory, like spiders and had a particular affiliation for the number eight. Probably wore loose clothing – likely just a T-shirt and jeans. ”

The beginning of the sentence had gone well – a particular dilation of his eye revealed hope, excitement, but somehow you messed up. The spider track had been all wrong – you’d manage to associate it with a girl, he showed the same signs of remembering, possibly think he recognized, someone he had formed a mating fondness for: a slight parting of the lips, a flaring of the nostrils.

It wasn’t a stretch to say that the girl who liked horrorterrors was the same one who had a particularly fondness of spiders – but no, it was two separate girls, and you made some obvious mistake somewhere, didn’t see some slight difference in reaction.

“Sorry, but I don’t think I recognize her.”

-_-_-

The second time you see him is in an investigation of a murder suspect – if you can even call it that, because it took you two seconds to realize it was the woman whom John Egbert had turned out to be dating. A renowned gambler, alcoholic, and self-proclaimed fortune teller, Abigail Smith had been a lon dark-haired beauty well known around that area of town. The case had appeared to hold at least a smidgen of challenge, but an unnoticed cartridge filled with too many references to luck and a slight ‘elooooooongation’ on several of the words had made it so simple that well, a normal person could’ve figured it out on their own.

The crime scene had been bloody enough, and you are hardly shocked when you enter her house hold and she that she was stupid enough to not even clean up before going home.

The young man had become unnerved when you saw him, so unnerved that even though you lacked a police badge, or any form of identification, he’s rambling everywhere.

“I tried to stop her, but she wouldn’t listen! She just picked up up that cash register and threw it, and- I would’ve done anything! She’s the closest thing I have! Please, I’ll take the blame for her, just let me keep in touch with her and…”

You ignore the rambling and simply take a look at the small apartment complex. Spider motif on the pillows, pet tarantula trapped in a cage, an unorthodox amount of webbing bundled up in a corner of the room.

You lead him outside, and he’s still talking, and he looks so small when you look down on him.

“You’re looking for an approximation of someone . An approximation of several someones. Whenever you find someone similar enough, you latch on, blatantly ignore whatever obvious mental disorders are apparent within them. Maybe you relate – you might suffer from paranoid personality disorder, yet you seem to lack the maladaptive social functions inherent with it. Search of such archtypes indicates that you are trying to find some small trace from the past, and you’ll use whatever charm you need to find it. However, on the contrary-“

John Egbert raises a hand to interrupt you, but you steamroll over his words.

“On the contrary, you’ve mastered a complex system of maintaining a safe emotional distance from everyone. You approach people who fit one of several predetermined sets of characteristics, and sometimes you become close, you try to tell them what the hell happened to you, and they leave you. But you’re prepared for that too, aren’t you? You were hardly nothing in that room, just a small dufflesack resting in the corner – no one who had planned to stay for long would’ve let it sit and accumulate that weeks worth of dust. And finally, when you are evicted from their life, you can simply pick it up and go, and meander your way across someone else’s mind scape.”

John Egbert is dumbfounded, which is the exact same way everyone else has reacted when they first heard one of your deductions. It is also a handy marker saying that ‘Yes, you are right.’

“There’s a coffeeshop down the road that is supposedly very popular, despite the lackluster ingredients that few ever bother to notice. We can go down there. You can help me figure you out, and maybe, in exchange, I can give you someone who’ll believe what you have to say.”

In the end, he follows without complaint.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yep, chapter two. Hope you guys are enjoying it so far!

The kid just talks nonsense.

Not even meaningful nonsense, not even crazy person nonsense – just plain old ordinary man on the street nonsense. Just ‘how’s the weather’ and ‘wow you seem really stressed!’ and ‘you keep on making that face, it’s kind of hilarious’ and ‘hey you’re that one guy with the cool hat’. You sigh, and restrain the urge to tell him that the hat isn’t even yours.

“You’re kind of strange, you know. You concentrate on everything.” This is probably the first thing he said that was even slightly interesting. Sadly, it wasn’t the first that was obvious.

“I don’t concentrate on things. I just don’t ignore them.”

“So what, do you just go around and analyze random people like me? That’s kind of weird, and also a bit creepy. I used to have a friend like that – sometimes I would tell her my dreams and she’d do her magic psychoanalysis on them!”

“Do you know where she is?”

“Well….somewhat. We got separated along the way! I…there were four of us back then! We were all in a big heap of trouble, but we figured out how to travel to a new place to fix it. My friend Jade found this ship and we…sailed on it, but then there was a,” John taps his fingers a bit, trying to figure out how to phrase himself. “An explosion, of sorts. The rest made it through, but in a way I guess I kind of…got blown out? I woke up and ended up here.”

He’s showing an obvious aversion to your eyes, an obvious sign of deception.

“Where was the boat from?”

“What?”

“You’re illegal. That’s obvious enough to tell. Or at least, you have no official documentation.”

“Yes, I do, I have birth certificates! And licenses, and a passport-“

“My brother dug up some of you documentation for the investigation. I could’ve easily done without, but I did get to look at it. You missed several important details in it, John. Several small things, but they could easily get you in trouble one day.”

“Uh, is there a chance you can tell me what they are? You seem interested in me, so I think you’d want to make sure I didn’t get arrested.”

“Give me a clue that isn’t purposely vague, John. You were in a ship and you crashed off of it. You’ve told me nothing.”

“I’d prefer not to talk about it.”

“How about this, give me a hint, and I’ll come back to you when I figure it out. I’m quite possibly one of the most intelligent people on this planet, and if you won’t tell me, I can figure it out piece by piece.”

John smiles a bit.

“Are you sure you’re ready to face my prankster’s gambit like that?”

Little phrases like this occasionally catch you off guard, but they’re easy enough to figure out. “Sure.”

“Sburb. That’s all I’ll give you.” He grins so confidently, and he’s so convinced that you’ll never figure it out. Your mind funnels the word through your mind, and it’s familiar, but you aren’t sure where you’ve heard it from. Nevertheless, the cogs of your mind are grinding again.

“That’s that, then. I’ll get going and I assure you that I will see you again within the day.”

You stand up and leave the café, then pause. There’s never a bad opportunity to make a dramatic exit.

“John, I’d suggest getting a professional to properly forge your next birth certificate. If you’re planning to use it officially, you might want to know that no one ever makes one that elegant. Think words and lines and more words.”

With that, you take your leave.

-_-_-_-___

This is what all your resources say about Sburb: It’s a computer game. It’s production began on June 12th, 2009, but was quickly discontinued about two months afterwards. It was fairly popular when first announced.

It was supposed to be a world building game, similar to the Sims, but after that, the website kind of jumbles. A mix of numbers – no pattern detected, they are literally just a jumble of numbers. The only thing at the end of the site is one line of text, something so obscurely hidden that even your eyes almost missed it.

“Game canceled. Current timeline doomed.”

That is all there is. Every information research, every fact in your head. There is nothing in this game, there is nothing about this game to imply that it has any meaning beyond what it is, except one phrase from one miniscule man in an enormous world.

You sigh, and you type in another query, determined to find something.

_-__-_

Two days later, and your confidence is grizzled, and it doesn’t help when he just looks at you kind of shocked after you find him in the park and tell him everything you found out.

“It’s a game. Focuses on simulation. Discontinued August of 2009.” Those facts bounce around your mind, cluttering it up unnecessarily, and once you make the effect of figuring all this out, you promise yourself that you’ll clean it out and replace it with something actually applicable to the art of being a consulting detective.

You don’t need much skill in reasoning to find out that he’s surprised. His eyes are widened and he’s struggling to keep his lips pursed. “So you…actually managed to find something on it? It actually exists.”

“I believe I made that clearly evident, John.”

John pauses a bit, reticent, eyes looking between the grass on the ground and the hands in his lap and the man sitting next to him on the bench. Small gestures that people do often reveal thinking – with John it’s a scrunching of the face and drumming of his fingers.

“John, if you want to tell me something, do it now. I do have appointments to be getting to.”

“I died, once.” The phrase was blurted out. The sentence reminded Sherlock of steam being pumped inside a glass jar, until the pressure got so intense that it simply shattered into a million pieces. “I died, and then I came back as a god, and it was because of that game, Sburb. I know it sounds stupid, but it’s true! That game destroyed the Earth, and created a new universe, and my friends and I had to restart it, and my friend Jade was able to use her powers to guide a ship into the new universe, but something happened going in, the ship crashed or something. Or maybe Jade had forgotten to apply her powers to me or something, and I fell out, and now I’m stuck here and-“

“I’m leaving.”

“What?”

“I’m leaving.” You say, and you do indeed get up and turn you way to the direction of ‘out of the park’.

“But you’re the only one who was willing to listen! Please!” The boy is visibly upset, but you aren’t one to be moved by the beginnings of tears.

“I have told you, I have places to be.”

You are a man of science, and you thought you had found someone interesting. Interesting people are so rare, and to find one in the vicinity is even rarer. The problem with interesting is that interesting people tend to have minds that border on the completely insane, and it’s easy enough to get the two mixed up.

John is easy enough to deduce. A man too overtaken by his own delusions to live normally, and is thus driven to find way to validate his own distorted mindscape. John Egbert might just be an identity invented to fulfill this goal. To investigate even further would simply be to divulge the roots of insanity in a madman, and you have better things to do than trek through the minds of the insane.

This is not the last time you see John Egbert.


End file.
